Policy solutions needed for the future of coral reefs

The 2023 marine heatwave event unfolding globally is a stark reminder of the impacts of climate change on coral reefs. At the time of our writing, average global sea surface temperatures were the hottest ever recorded. Coral reefs throughout the Americas and the Caribbean were being exposed to unprecedented and prolonged thermal stress (22 degrees Celsius [°C] heating weeks in the Florida Keys), leading to extensive reef bleaching. Reefs in the Red Sea, Indonesia, and South East Asia were experiencing increasing heat stress in excess of NOAA’s (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's) alert level 2 (https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/product/vs/map.php). Coral reefs around the globe are degrading at an unprecedented rate, primarily because of climate change; however, other anthropogenic stressors, such as poor water quality, pollution, and overfishing, remain significant. The global live coral cover has been halved since 1950 (Eddy et al. 2021), with coral declines of more than 99% predicted at 2°C warming above the preindustrial mean global temperatures (IPCC 2018). At the current rate of emission reductions, this could potentially occur as early as the 2030s (Allan et al. 2023). The established conservation paradigm has addressed coral reef degradation through the development of marine protected areas (MPAs) and by local actions, such as water quality improvements and fisheries management. However, addressing local-scale threats alone is insufficient to meet biodiversity goals at the national and international scale, particularly where natural ecosystem recovery is limited. Although MPAs are appropriate for reducing proximate pressures and helping to maintain resilience, they are less effective—if they are effective at all—against complex, large-scale threats originating outside their boundaries, such as climate change. For functioning coral reef ecosystems to exist into the future, the importance of limiting carbon emissions to keep warming under 2°C cannot be stressed enough. However, alongside traditional approaches to conservation, the scientific and conservation communities are now considering more active management interventions, such as restoration and adaptation to build resilience into coral reef ecosystems. There is increasing recognition that, given the ongoing threat of climate change, unconventional solutions are urgently needed (Van Oppen et al. 2017). Unconventional interventions for reef conservation are being proposed and trialed globally (figure 1). In Australia, experts are investigating a suite of innovative and targeted measures to help the Great Barrier Reef build resilience to the impacts of climate change (McLeod et al. 2022). In Saudi Arabia, the 100-hectare Shushah Island Coral Reefscape proposes to accelerate solutions and innovations for conserving coral reefs in a changing climate, and in the United States, Mission Iconic Reefs is a large-scale project to restore seven reef systems in the Florida Keys using strategies to promote genetic diversity and climate resilience. Similar projects are likely increase in frequency as the impacts of climate change on coral reefs become more pronounced. Locations of some coral reef intervention projects globally. Interventions to minimize the impacts of climate change on coral reefs are being investigated globally, including at Shushah Island, photograph: KAUST Restoration Initiative, NEOM; the Great Barrier Reef, photograph: Australian Institute of Marine Sciences; and the Florida Keys, photograph: Coral Restoration Foundation. Although scientists are calling for a shifting paradigm for coral conservation by moving to a more active role (Van Oppen et al. 2017), the policy frameworks currently in place limit the extent to which this can occur in practice. Most countries do not have specific policies for marine restoration, and regulatory requirements and complexity increase the transactional costs and reduce the incentive to restore. In fact, marine conservation policies were designed to limit activities that could cause environmental harm but do not allow activities meant to achieve environmental benefit. Therefore, they do not effectively facilitate active interventions such as restoration and adaptation (Fidelman et al. 2019, Shumway et al. 2021). Ultimately, the purposes and methods embodied in policies determine the extent to which scientific concepts and actions are implemented (or not; Clement et al. 2015). The traditional protection-focused approach has, in some cases, led to policy frameworks that significantly delay and often prevent active interventions at the scale needed to facilitate ecosystem recovery in a changing climate. This will ultimately limit our ability to meet restoration targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (e.g., 30% of degraded marine and coastal ecosystems are under effective restoration by 2030). Nowhere are these issues more evident than in Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The world's largest reef system has now experienced six mass bleaching events and a grim new first in 2022: the first mass bleaching event to occur in a La Niña year. Climate models forecast the loss of 70%–90% of coral reefs at 1.5°C warming, and the Great Barrier Reef could face annual bleaching events if the warming exceeds 2°C (Pörtner et al. 2022). The repeated bleaching events observed to date have resulted in a change of species diversity across the reef and will continue to cause reef declines as the severity of climate change increases, affecting the reef in ways that are not yet completely understood. However, it is increasingly likely that the Great Barrier Reef of future decades will look and function markedly differently from how it has in the past (e.g., Hughes et al. 2018). The long-term outlook for the Great Barrier Reef has continued to deteriorate, and there has been insufficient progress toward meeting key targets in the Reef 2050 Plan (the long-term strategy for protecting and managing the reef). As a result, the Great Barrier Reef has recently been given a 1-year reprieve from an in danger listing from UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), subject to governmental efforts to make genuine progress in advancing reef conservation and climate goals. The Great Barrier Reef, like other coral reef ecosystems, is at a precipice. It is faced with the potential for catastrophic coral declines in the next decade, and major remedial innovations are necessary. The use of unconventional technologies, such as assisted evolution of heat tolerant corals, larval restoration, and coral seeding are being investigated by the world's largest reef restoration authority, the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP; McLeod et al. 2022). In response to these challenges, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority developed a globally significant innovation policy with the aim of enabling restoration and adaptation interventions (GBRMPA 2020). The Policy on Great Barrier Reef Interventions provides guidelines for how interventions will be considered and authorized, using an adaptive, risk-based, and staged approach to implementation, particularly in regard to the conservation benefit provided relative to the risk of inaction. The potential of the policy to fully enable unconventional interventions is yet to be tested, because many of the interventions being considered by RRAP pose unprecedented challenges to risk mitigation under existing regulatory frameworks (e.g., high levels of uncertainty when evaluating the potential future risks and benefits of interventions relative to the risks posed by climate change). The future state of the Great Barrier Reef will, to a large extent, depend on a shared vision for coral reef resilience into the future. Given the scale of human-induced impacts on the Great Barrier Reef, inaction seems unethical; however, there is a need to balance the risk of future coral loss from climate change against the potential for significant (but uncertain) impacts and benefits from novel reef interventions. This ambiguity around the benefits of coral interventions relative to risk, as well as stakeholder differences in risk tolerance, perceptions, and social values, has the potential to lead to governance inertia (Rabitz et al. 2022) or uncertainty about how to move forward, given the shifting ecological state of the reef. Regardless of the chosen path, there is an urgent need to reform management strategies and advance policies that can cope with the complexities and uncertainties of the future to come. The management of coral reefs is a challenging space, with some calling for urgent, sustained, and proactive intervention (Anthony et al. 2017, Van Oppen et al. 2017). Still others are urging a continued focus solely on the drivers of reef degradation, given the innate ability of coral reefs to adapt (Hughes et al. 2023). Technological solutions are considered a government placebo policy by some, which provides the appearance of positive action despite the continued subsidization of fossil fuels and the avoidance of strong measures to alleviate the drivers of climate change (Morrison et al. 2020). Our goal is not to advocate for which types of actions are most appropriate for coral reef ecosystems but, rather, to advance regulatory frameworks that are as robust as possible. However, if unconventional technologies for coral reef conservation are to be used as part of the management toolbox, a conscious shift will be required in how we govern coral reefs—from protectionist to interventionist. These frameworks can draw on the principles used for the governance of emerging technologies, which were designed to foresee and address future challenges and uncertainty to better support innovation—for example, by using inclusive codesign of projects that can consider different potential futures and proactively adapt management strategies accordingly. As the impacts of climate change become more apparent, coral reef managers and regulators will begin to face greater environmental, social, and ethical dilemmas around interventions for coral reefs, particularly the use of unconventional technological solutions. A small window of opportunity currently exists to develop robust and appropriate governance, such that regulatory systems can better cope with uncertainty to support and assess innovation. The use of unconventional interventions for conservation has the potential to modify coral reefs as we now know them; however, in the face of continued inability to limit emissions, coral reef ecosystems are already undergoing profound change. There is therefore a need to make urgent policy decisions on the future management of coral reef ecosystems, balancing uncertain risks with similarly uncertain climate futures. This research was funded by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, administered by the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (RRAP-REG-01 Regulatory and Policy Environment). Thank you to Ken Anthony for invaluable insights on the manuscript. All authors are supported by funding as part of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program. Nicole Shumway ([email protected]), Rose Foster, Brian Head, and Pedro Fidelman are affiliated with the Centre for Policy Futures, Nicole Shumway is also affiliated with the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, and Rose Foster is also affiliated with the T.C. Beirne School of Law, all at the University of Queensland, in St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia.

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